Wish I could be there. (Boston is our home during the academic year, but rigtht now we’re getting some R&R at our perma-home in Santa Barbara.) Meanwhile I suggest that everybody who cares about VRM consider the matter of HCRM — Health Care Relationship Management. (A term I just made up. HRM might be better if it wasn’t about HR.) Health 2.0’s concern is user-generated health care, its about page says. That puts it in VRM territory right there.

This is a huge topic, of a degree of importance that verges on the absolute. It’s also perhaps the most sisyphean of VRM categories. I find that daunting, but there are many professionals in health care and related fields who have been doing a great job pushing big rocks long distances. These people are heroes, even if they don’t know or acknowledge that. Here are some links to get started:

Imagine that for all your life, and your parents’ lives, your money had been managed by other people who had extensive training and licensing. Imagine that all your records were in their possession, and you could occasionally see parts of them, but you just figured the pros had it under control.

Imagine that you knew you weren’t a financial planner but you wanted to take as much responsibility as you could – to participate. Imagine that some money managers (not all, but many) attacked people who wanted to make their own decisions, saying “Who’s the financial planner here?”

Then imagine that one day you were allowed to see the records, and you found out there were a whole lot of errors, and the people carefully guarding your data were not as on top of things as everyone thought.

3 Comments

Thanks for covering this issue, and last week’s events in Boston – I’m writing to offer my correct twitter handle @healthblawg (http://twitter.com/healthblawg) and to let folks now that archived tweetstreams for #hcbos, #socpharm and #health2con may be found on my blog at http://bit.ly/p1GF3 (HealthCamp Boston and Social Pharmer Boston) and http://bit.ly/irdAr (Health 2.0)